Making a Decision to Outsource: Driving Factors

Most executives view offshore outsourcing most of all as a source of cost reducing. The greatest savings are expected to come from lower labor cost and reduced project timelines. However offshore outsourcing also creates new challenges and expenses for the organization involved. Those may include vendor selection costs, legal costs, costs of transition and many others. That is why despite the evidence of possible major up-front cost savings many outsourcing vendors have yet to prove that they are able to provide positive ROI in a complex project.

Yet businesses have to perform deep analysis of its strategic program and goals before making a strategic decision to outsource part of their activities. The main driving factors are as follows:

Lack of special expertise/knowledge. This is probably one of the most important factors that force companies to outsource. Many projects require technical expertise that is not present within the company. Moreover, very often the company can not hire employees with required expertise, or it is not reasonable to employ them full-time. As Outsourcing Institute has suggested